That's a disturbing Daffy....

Ten days!

Haven't looked forward to a game this much since RDR2 which was only two years ago, but that seems longer doesn't it?

I have no idea if Cyberpunk will live up to my expectations really. But at this point it just has to. To this day I rate Witcher 3 as the best PC game of all time. If I consider every facet of game design, then for me W3 comes out on top. It's the most expertly crafted game I've played.

Same studio. Now, as to whether the people are the same, I have no idea. But I think about how amazing W3 is, and this is the same dev, with more time, a bigger budget and a half-decade of innovation and technology to move things forward. The trailers are magnificent. Gameplay looks awesome. I have very high, perhaps disillusioned, expectations for Cyberpunk.

Then there are these delays. Why? Is it buggy? Substandard? Serious, unresolved issues? Or are they just cramming in more awesome?

Bah, I'd be better off not caring about it. It would be better to forget all about it, buy it a year from now in the Game of the Year Edition with all the crap patched out of it. But I will buy it on release. Actually I might get it early to avoid release-day slowdowns. It preloads on your system with a pre-purchase, yes?

Ten days and we will see if it lives up to my lofty expectations, falls discouragingly short, or exceeds them in every way. My money's on Projekt Red to come through in a big way, but there's this creeping doubt over the delays. Natural, I think. Not long now and we will know.

I've found that RPG's are very much like a movie or a tv series. If the story and characters don't grab you and are not compelling then pretty much everything else doesn't matter.

What I mean more specifically by that is that while the gameplay/combat may be well implemented and fun, I think the main aspect that RPG fans are attracted to is the story and characters. If the only thing good about an RPG is the combat then you might as well just play the standard first person shooters instead.

Characters are a big part of it, agreed. But for me I have to say it goes way beyond that. Writing, score, world-building, soundscape, combat, dialog, graphics, stability and on and on. All of this is important. if any one aspect is poor, it can be held up if the other components are strong. But maybe the most important part of an RPG for me is the mechanics and character build synergy.

I want tons of options when building a character. Opportunity cost is vital. I want to agonize over picking this talent instead of that one. And then, how do these choices manifest themselves in gameplay? Did it make my character feel unique, more powerful, more vulnerable or just more snazzy and jazzy? Are these choices particularly powerful or path-revealing? Does choosing this instead of that make for a singular experience, so that if I play again choosing the other thing will I feel like I'm playing a different game? I want to regret what I did not choose twenty hours later ya know?

It's all interwoven and really I think this will be one of Cyberpunk's strengths, with how intricate the systems are and how fleshed out the world and characters will be. But again, i really do not know. All I can go on are the trailers and CDPR's track record. Part of me feels like it's a can't-miss game. Part of me feels that I've gone over the edge of expectations. In the end it will probably split that gap.

I really have to like the setting of an open world game or I have a hard time getting into it.

Even an objectively great game like Witcher 3 or RDR2, won't grab me otherwise, whereas I liked games that were somewhat mixed bags like Fallout 4 and the Stalker series because of their settings.

As a fan of the pen and paper Cyberpunk 2020 world from way back, I think it's safe to say that I'll like the setting, I just hope the content even comes close to living up to the hype.

By all accounts, the world-building in this game is phenomenal. Some of my favorites have been GTA's Los Santos, RDR2, Witcher 3 of course. It's a city, but the word is that it's huge, dense and alive. I said before that all I have to go on are the trailers and track record. But there are also previews. CDPR allowed a short one back in June and a much longer one recently, where gaming journalists were afforded a chance at some game time to write previews. It was four hours the first time, but sixteen the second. There are a bunch of these articles out there, but this is one from a sixteen hour run

https://www.gamesradar.com/16-hours-with-cyberpunk-2077-and-i-never-want-to-leave-night-city/

I'm going Street Kid for the first run

I'm starting off Nomad, mostly because it makes sense that someone who was raised outside of Night City and indeed may have never been there before would be unfamiliar with it.

I'll save Street Kid and Corpo for subsequent playthroughs.

Ahh, nicely played there Crane. That does indeed make sense. I'm going for the gritty back-alley and street tough vibe

I'll be all tats and smoking gun barrels.

Either way we can make fun of the corpos

I know nothing about this game but have a couple of hopes:

1) We can go in every building we see

2) We can mod the game

and lastly...

3) We can explore and do without needing to wait for or find missions, like in GTA games.

I don't care for missions at all.

Would it be an oversimplification to say that Cyberpunk 2077 is essentially a cross between "Altered Carbon" and "Blade Runner"?

Hard to say at this stage PM. Aesthetically you're probably in the right ballpark, it has those sorts of vibes. Nine days to go eh? Has anyone already bought it?

Blastman, based on what you wrote I'm thinking it's the wrong game. We already know that not all buildings are enterable (spellcheck says not a word). No idea about mods, was W3 moddable? (spellcheck says not a word).

As for the GTA comparison, not sure what you mean. In GTA you can go anywhere from the start. But I think that missions will be at the core of the experience. The missions, character interactions and progression will be wrapped up together, but in such a way that it all feels natural and organic, as hinted at in some of the previews. From what I've seen there is probably plenty to enjoy if a player just wanted to exist in the gameworld. But I think it would miss most of what's great about the game. Caveat: But I have no idea really. Speculation and conjecture.

I bought it about 2 weeks ago. I believe it's unprecedented as far as I can tell but this game became available for pre-order about a year and a half before release! I really saw no reason to pre-order the game THAT early.

Closer to Blade Runner.

Mike Pondsmith's original take on Cyberpunk was a dark, edgy and chaotic neon and chrome drenched near future as envisioned in the late '80s.

The thing about the cyberpunk genre is that its fairly transient, where the state of affairs can plausibly only last so long before it evolves into regular sci fi.

GTA V is still essentially lifeless and dead when you aren't running missions and are in between them. Sure, you can drive around and steal stuff, rob stores, cars, etc., but you can't simply explore and converse and trade and do whatever like you can in say Morrowind or even Kingdom Come Deliverance. You're still burdened by the need to go on missions.

Don't get me wrong, GTA V has come a long way from GTA 3, where stuff actually does happen in the world and they've gone to great lengths to make it "feel" alive. But you, the player, are still burdened by the ever nagging need to do a mission goal, not your own goals, or else.


I spent a hundred hours playing KKD... and still haven't beaten the game. I basically put the main quest on hold and just went out into the world and my guy is wealthy beyond measure, with all the top gear, without progressing to the end of the main plot. I'm not sure where I am in the plot, actually. Likely halfway, but not at the end, that's for sure.

In No Man's Sky? Hah! I've barely scratched the main plot's surface, but hundreds of hours later I'm a tycoon with bases on planets and riches galore, but I do my own thing and I'm fine with that.



HOWEVER

If Cyberpunk is purely a story driven linear campaign, I'm okay with that. Hell, it could even be like Dynamix' "Rise of the Dragon" (if you remember this cyberpunk game from the early 90s" and I'd be fine with this. Waiting around for missions though, or trying to figure out where the next mission giver is like GTA forces you to do isn't my cup of tea.

I say this having enjoyed the Witcher games, immensely, especially Witcher 1. I haven't beaten Witcher 3 yet. Inventory management drives me nuts.

You must not be a fan of the Fallout RPG series then. I'm going to my inventory like every 5 minutes either because I've exceeded my carry weight or I need to break down my junk for repairing my armor or weapon.

I usually stop following the main quest fairly early on in open world RPGs, and don't pick it up again until I've put a lot of time in.

At some point I always wish I had the option to create a second character who isn't an overpowered Chosen One, maybe I just want to be a merchant or a cop or something?

Bah, how BO-RING!

Friend of mine gifted it to me in August, when I was still in a very "look and see" mode. I wasn't terribly impressed with the very first gameplay vids.

Witcher3, for me, had the benefit of the previous game, which in turn got me to read all the books, so the third installment built on a lot of lore and world details already established in my head. The game does play on that, introduces people and plotlines very familiar to the reader, which made for some smiles and head nods altrough the main story.

With Cyberpunk it's the complete opposite, as I've never touched anything of that setting before. But it's CDPR, they know how to do story, how to design realistic believable environments and how to make a good game, so I'm very optimistic I'll like it.

What I'm not sure of is, if it's a good idea to play it on the release date. Currently I immensely enjoy the Horizon Zero Dawn PC Port, and maybe giving CP2077 a month to settle with the most urgents patches before diving in would be a more rounded experience.

I just can't get into any sort of fantasy video game, RPG etc. I prefer my games to based in reality, ie flight sims, driving sims, naval sim, soldier sim, spaceflight sim. I think it's mainly because I don't want to learn how the given fantasy world works. I finally figured out that is why I could never get into "Elite Dangerous", which I should otherwise love. I just didn't want to learn the economics of what to trade where etc.

That's a valid point I suppose. There are few NPCs you can interact with in GTA, although it is densely populated. Most of it is window dressing so I think I see where you're coming from. I think Cyberpunk will be way ahead of anything else in random interaction with seemingly innocuous, unimportant or otherwise unremarkable NPCs. We all have our standards, or what we look for in our games, what is important to us. I hope you don't miss a great game because of this though.

A couple more random thoughts based on other comments..... I know nothing of Cyberpunk, the lore or anything else. But that doesn't matter at all. I could list dozens of games, books or movies that I enjoyed but knew nothing about heading in to it. About the 'can't do fantasy' comment.... yeah I get it, and you're not alone in thinking that way. But man, how many amazing gaming experiences would I have missed if I followed the same principle? An alternate reality is often what appeals most about these games. I like realism. I like games that are anything but real. Subnautica, Original Sin, Borderlands, Prey, Dishonored and dozens more great games would fall outside of the 'reality-based' criteria. I'm glad I play them both.